Book Review: The Endurance Handbook

The Endurance Handbook

written by Dr. Philip Maffetone
forward by Tawnee Prazak
published by Skyhorse Publishing

 

Who is Dr. Philip Maffetone?

Maffetone has a Doctor of Chiropractic degree, practices complementary medicine, and is an active songwriter. [REF: 1] He’s been coaching athletes for more than 30 years. In 1994, Triathlete Magazine named him Coach of the Year. Probably his most well-known client has been Mark Allen, who won the Hawaii Ironman Triathlon World Championship six times in seven years, the last being 1995.

Maffetone has authored, or co-authored, at least 11 books on health and fitness over the years. But he’s probably most well-known for his “Maffetone Method”, which uses the idea of Maximum Aerobic Function (MAF) heart rate (HR).

You can think of MAF HR as a revision of the “220-Age” heart rate formula. The formula becomes 180-Age, with some +/- HR modifiers for your current fitness and other health parameters. If forms the basis of Maffetone’s training method. It’s the antithesis of “No Pain, No Gain.” Many athletes feel they’re training too easily at this heart rate. But Maffetone advises them to be patient. Results will eventually manifest themselves.

The Endurance Handbook, though, is not about MAF training. It does have an appendix briefly discussing it, but the book is a much more general treatment of endurance training.

What is The Endurance Handbook About? Mind Over Movement

Along the lines of knocking down “No Pain, No Gain” thinking, The Endurance Handbook is an introductory text to starting a journey to becoming an endurance athlete. It seems to follow the medical tenet of “First, do no harm.”

Building on that tenet, Maffetone’s message in the book is to get healthy first, then get fit. And I agree. It’ll be much easier to live a pain-free life that way. Learn the motor movements of your sport slowly, deliberately, and you’ll preserve and protect your muscles, joints and tendons. 

For example, he recommends runners train barefoot so their running gait follows the most natural motion possible. Shoes add an unnecessary structure to a foot that has evolved to hit the ground bare. And he feels if only the elite marathoners didn’t have running shoe sponsorships to worry about, then a barefoot sub-two hour marathon would be within reach. Breaking that barrier could then lead to a cascade of equally fast marathons — just like Roger Bannister’s first sub-four minute mile achievement did for other sub-four performances.

However, I think his enthusiasm for a 1:59 marathon needs to be tempered. In August, 2015, The Sunday Times reported [REF: 2] that 1/3 of the Olympic and World Championship endurance and middle distance runners had given a suspicious blood test at some point during their careers. Perhaps all the knocking at the 1:59 marathon door has been enhanced a little … 

Nonetheless, after reading Maffetone’s chapter on feet I found myself padding barefoot about my house and yard more often. But as a cyclist, of course I can’t ride barefoot – that makes no sense. But I think the equivalent is paying for a really good bike fit. Get an objective view of how you sit on and pedal your bike. If you’ll be spinning through 10,000+ pedal strokes during a single ride, you should ensure each rotation is as efficient as possible. The only way to achieve that level of efficiency is to measure you and your bike – then make your bike fit you. Not the other way around.

And Maffetone advises you mind your brain too. It’s the central governor of all training and racing. Not only does it drive the neuropathways that make physical activity possible and indeed elegant, but it’s also responsible for the simple fact of getting your butt up off the couch and out the door for a workout in the first place. Maffetone presents some ideas to nurture your mind, which any person – athlete or not – would benefit from. Music is one approach he discusses. I especially liked his idea of “marking my territory” with the music I enjoy and find important to me.

Nutrition is a key natural performance enhancer for all athletes. I found Maffetone getting a little carried away and repetitive with his discussion of folate – primarily a criticism of too much folate in our diets – yet he does make a clear conclusion: “The remedy for these problems is very simple: eat your fruits and vegetables.” And finally he provides this sensible summary at the end of the Eating chapter: “Food is what powers our body to be the best endurance athletes. Don’t cheat your body and brain by eating junk food. Get into the habit of only buying healthy food – then it’s less likely to find its way into your house.” That last sentence reads a bit awkward. The premise is, if you have junk food in your house then you’re almost certainly going to eat it. If you don’t buy it in the first place, of course you won’t eat it! Some people don’t understand how powerful that simple logic is.

Problems

So my problems with the book are minor. There are some laughable editing errors, such as “attaché” where “attach” was needed. I’m not sure how a proof-reader could have missed these, unless the proofreading was farmed out to a low quality virtual assistant. 

I’m a man of action. I would have liked to see more summaries of action steps the reader could take away at the end of each chapter. But at least there's a helpful “Muscle Fatigue Checklist.” Every endurance athlete should reference it to keep their training on an accelerated pace.

Recommendation

This is a book I’d give to new endurance athletes. They won’t go wrong starting with the information here. If you know someone that’s keen on beginning cycling or running or triathlon, it would make a good gift idea. But it’s only a start. Cyclists will need more of this information mapped to them. And that’s where the services of a knowledgeable coach would be a solid next step after reading The Endurance Handbook. 

Check it out yourself at Amazon …

The Endurance Handbook: How to Achieve Athletic Potential, Stay Healthy, and Get the Most Out of Your Body

And Maffetone's full treatment on endurance training using the MAF HR method …
The Big Book of Endurance Training and Racing

References

1.  http://www.bloomberg.com/research/stocks/private/person.asp?personId=1938276&privcapId=2482488&previousCapId=82032365&previousTitle=Omthera%20Pharmaceuticals,%20Inc.
2. http://www.bbc.com/sport/athletics/33948924

So You Want To Start Road Riding - Part 2

In Part 1 I started you on your way to being a Road Rider with some equipment tips. In this post I continue getting you going with some riding tips:

5. Save your legs, not your gears. We have gears on a bike for a reason. They make pedaling over any terrain more efficient. And by efficient, that means finding a gear that lets you pedal at a cadence (the number of times in one minute that one foot makes a complete pedal revolution) between about 80rpm and 100rpm. Even if the bike computer you picked up didn't have a cadence function, you can still estimate it by watching the elapsed time while counting the down-strokes of one foot for 6 seconds. Add a zero to that count and you've got cadence. I see too many new cyclists mashing it out in a really big gear at a cadence of 60rpm or even less. While you may think this is giving you a really good workout (it feels so hard, after all!), when you're just starting out this will likely mess up your knees. Later, when you've got lots of miles in your legs, you can try some big gear, low cadence riding to build strength. But that's a specific type of workout. When you're just starting out, use your gears and learn to spin.
6. Use various hand positions on the handlebars. Changing your hand position is not only good for hand comfort, but it's also good for your neck, low back and rear end. The most comfortable position should be with your hands cupping the brakehoods. That LBS bike fit (discussed in Part 1) should have addressed this set up for you. Moving your hands to the flat top part of the bars will shift more of your weight onto your sit bones. It's a good position when you're riding uphill, as it creates a bit better leverage for pushing the pedals over. But it's the least aerodynamic, as your chest catches a lot of wind. Moving down into the lower drops will let you ride much faster, and it's probably the best position for bike handling. But it puts more strain into your low back, neck (you need to crane your neck to look up), and adds pressure to the front area of your rear end as you'll be sitting more on the nose of the seat. As with all the gears you have available, you've also got all these hand positions. Use them all to keep your ride comfortable.
7. Look down the road. Look ahead and scan the road for obstacles and debris. If you see something, don't continue to look right at it, but look to where you want your bike wheels to go. Staring straight at that sewer grate makes it a target in your mind, and you'll probably hit it! Concentrate on an area about a foot to one side of it. If you find yourself riding with other cyclists, don't stare down at their rear wheel right in front of you. Look up at the rider's hips and low back. Let your peripheral vision mind the gap between their back wheel and your front wheel. And then keep glancing up, over, and around that rider, down the road to see everything else that might be coming your way. The sooner you know something might be happening, the sooner you can react to get out of the way.
8. Be predictable! I think the single most easiest way to keep yourself safe while riding in traffic is to be predictable. Follow the rules of the road, and you'll be doing everything the cars will be expecting you to do. Drivers are expecting the things moving on the roads to be doing the same things they do. So use those hand signals when turning. Stop for all traffic lights and stop signs. When you come to an intersection with another driver, look them straight in the eye. You might both be wearing sunglasses, but usually you can tell if they've seen you by the way they hold their head. If you've got the right-of-way, and they really don't seem to see you, then get your hands ready to brake!

Cycling is an activity we can do for pretty much our entire lives. Following these 8 points (the first 4 are in Part 1) will ease you into becoming a comfortable, proficient and safe rider!

Leave me a comment if you've got any tips of your own to add … 

So You Want To Start Road Riding - Part 1

Whatever your reason for taking up cycling — fitness, charity event, gran fondo, racing — here are a few tips to get you off on the right pedal stroke.

In this first post I'll give you some equipment tips. The next post will cover some riding tips.

1. Fit the bike properly. When you get a new bike at your local bike shop (LBS), ask them to give you a proper bike fit analysis. They should do this for minimal or no extra charge. Even if you've picked up a used bike from Kijiji, eBay, or Craigslist, it's a good idea to take it to your LBS. It's more than worth the investment of your time and money. I had some aching low-back issues that physio wasn't fixing. So, I paid for my own bike fit and the back issues were solved! The most important point to remember is that the bike should fit the rider, not the other way around. The handlebar stem is one component that's easy to change and can make a huge difference in riding comfort. An LBS should have a good variety of different lengths and rises to try.
2. Get a seat that's right for you. The seat is the most important contact point on your bike. Don't fool yourself into thinking that a wide cushy model is what you need to start out. It might work for a 5 minute ride, but not a 5 hour ride. If you're beginning with a used bike, its seat probably isn't right for you either. While at the LBS for your fit analysis, ask about their bike seat demo program. Most bike seat companies make a selection of demo seats that you can try for a few days before making your purchase. In the very least, strongly consider a model with a cut-out center, as these help get your weight distributed onto your sit-bones, where it should be. Specialized even makes a neat gel pad measuring device that your LBS might have. You sit on a memory foam/gel pad that leaves an impression of your sit-bones. That impression measures the width between those bones, so you can get the proper saddle width — from any manufacturer, not just Specialized.
3. Get a helmet. This is another vital piece of equipment that you can pick up at your LBS. 60% of cycling-related deaths are the result of head injuries. It makes no sense to take that risk, when the helmets we have today are so light and well-ventilated, You'll hardly even know you're wearing one. Most places throughout North America now have mandatory helmet laws for children. Regardless of where you live, make sure your children wear helmets, and make sure you do to. Children will copy what they see their parents doing. Helmets are also mandatory for most gran fondos, charity rides, and certainly every organized bike race.
4. Get a bike computer. You will need a bike computer to help manage your training rides. Look for something that provides at least speed, distance, cadence and elapsed time. Wahoo even makes a brilliant gizmo to plug into your iPhone, turning it into a full-functioned bike computer. The next upgrade to consider is something that gives you Heart Rate, a key metric to start monitoring once you take training more seriously. A Power Meter is the gold standard of riding metrics, and a hefty investment. In a few years you might find yourself considering one of these, as they can really make training scientifically accurate.  

See Part 2 …

TT Position Testing With Lance Armstrong And Tom Danielson

In late 2008, Lance Armstrong returned to the wind tunnel to test his Time Trial (TT) position. You can see a short video excerpt here.

The audio quality is a bit flaky, so I've made a summary of his comments for you.

What Armstrong Tested

Steve Hed had Lance try 3 hand positions:

1. Fully out on the ends of the TT bar extensions
2. Choked up half-way
3. Choked up all the way back on the extensions, close to the elbow pads.

Combined with these hand positions, they tested 2 sitting positions on the saddle:

1. Back in a normal position
2. Moved forward onto the nose of the saddle.

Note, sitting forward on the saddle with the hands choked all the way back in front of the elbow pads is just too compact a position to ride properly. Lance didn't bother with that position.

A Blend Of Athlete & Equipment

Hed makes some comments about how a good TT position is a combination of the athlete and the equipment. You can be 5% slower in the wind tunnel, but if you can pedal with 25% more power, you're going to go faster.

On one day, Lance tried to ride with the seat back, the nose of the seat up, elbows very narrow, bars low. He couldn't ride the bike.

The next day, he rode with the nose of the seat down, the seat forward, elbows a bit wider, and the bars raised some. He was much more comfortable.

Testing On The Velodrome

Around the same time, Lance also tested his TT position on the velodrome. You can see that video here. The goal was to ride various test runs in different bike positions yet holding a constant speed. The required power output was the measured success variable. A lower power that produced the same speed pointed to a more optimum position.

4 UCI Rules For Your TT Set-Up

According to the UCI rules there are 4 key points that most commissaires will be checking. You need to keep these in mind for your set-up:

1. Your forearms (not your hands though) must be parallel to the ground when the commissaires assess the legality of your position.
2. The top-most portion of any piece of your TT bars (except the shift levers) must be equal to or lower than your seat height.
3. The ends of your TT bars (except the shift levers again) can extend no further than 75cm horizontally forward of the center of your bottom bracket.
4. The tip of your seat must be at least 5cm horizontally behind the center of your bottom bracket.
   

You can only qualify for "morphological" exceptions to points 3 and 4. That is, excessively long legs or arms can allow you exceptions to these rules. The commissaires will put you on your bike and assess the following measurements:

If you exceed the 75cms in point 3, your elbow angle must be less than 120°. Even considering this point, your bars ends can be no more than 80cm ahead of your bottom bracket. The commissaires will make sure you're sitting normally on your saddle and that your hands are extended all the way to the ends of the extensions, as you could normally grasp them - no choking up on the bars to tighten your elbow angle.

In point 4, your seat can be closer than 5cm to your bottom bracket only if your knee remains above or just behind the pedal axle when your right foot is in the forward 3 o'clock position and you sit normally on your saddle (again, the commissaires will make sure your don't scoot yourself way back on the seat to change the angle of your knee).

The previously extreme "praying mantis" positions of Floyd Landis and Levi Leipheimer are now technically illegal.

I remember when I first saw Landis' position in the 2006 Tour de France, the ends of his bars were well above his seat - and that alone made his position illegal as it violated point 2 above.

Tom Danielson On The Road With His TT Position

And look here what Tom Danielson is doing with his TT position.

In this video, the side-angle shots show Danielson's bars are horizontal, and he can get his forearms parallel to the ground. But in the front-on shots he has moved his hands up high, so the bases of his palms are resting on top of the shift levers. His forearms are no longer parallel to the ground; they are approaching the praying mantis position, allowing him to "hide" behind his hands, like Armstrong commented in his video.

You might be able to get away with this change in hand position during your time trial, so long as a commissaire doesn't see you make the move. Otherwise, do your best to keep those forearms horizontal, certainly while your position is being assessed pre-race.

Test, Make Your Own Refinements, & Train In Your TT Position

Like Lance, you'll need to experiment to find what works best for you. Check out my earlier post, Free Speed In Your Next Time Trial, for some ideas to test the aerodynamics of your position.

Remember, you'll need to train in your TT position to get the best power in that position. If you're serious about your time trialling, you should be training at least once a week in your TT position.

The Bike Needs To Look Like The Rider - Andy Pruitt

Dr. Andy Pruitt is the Director of the Boulder Center for Sports Medicine. He has more than 35 years of experience as a specialist in Sports Medicine. He's also one of the world's experts in bike fit.

I can attest to getting a proper bike set-up. For years, on my old Cannondale I would develop low back pain after as little as 1.5 hours of riding. When I bought my Cervelo Carbon Soloist, I went through a thorough bike fitting, following the guidelines in Pruitt's book Andy Pruitt's Complete Medical Guide for Cyclists. I can now ride more than 5 hours at a time with no back pain issues.

Small improvements in your position mean not only better comfort on the bike, but better power on it too. As Pruitt has said, "The bike needs to look like the rider."

Did Bike Fit Determine Gold?

When I was at the 2003 World Cycling Championships in Hamilton, ON, Canada, I was mesmerized by the time difference between Michael Rogers' 2nd and Uwe Peschel's 3rd on the podium - 0.56 seconds to be exact, after riding 41.3km! What made that even more important was the eventual stripping of the Gold from David Millar for his EPO use. Rogers became the 2003 World Time Trial Champion.

Imagine yourself winning Gold by only 0.5 seconds. That could easily have come from your ever-so-slightly-better bike fit.

Pruitt Consults With Team Saxo Bank

Pruitt is also the main mind behind Specialized's Body Geometry product line. As pro cycling's Team Saxo Bank is riding Specialized equipment this season, Pruitt recently spent some time with the team reviewing their set-ups. See this surprisingly frank report of his review from cyclingnews.com.

Get Your Own Fit Just Right

I'll be posting tips about bike fit, including a few counter-intuitive things to consider.

In the meantime, it would be worth your time to either get to your local bike shop and have a proper bike fit review. Or you could pick up a copy of Andy Pruitt's Complete Medical Guide for Cyclists and start working on it yourself.

2 Reasons To Put Park Tools In Your Bicycling Toolbox

In any cycling discipline, tire pressure is a critical component to a fast bike set up. Generally, the rougher the surface, the lower the pressure. The smoother, the higher.

Now I've had many floor pumps over the years. An accurate pressure gauge is an important feature. Thankfully they're pretty much standard on models from all companies these days. What isn't standard is pump longevity.

I've found many of the cheaper (no-name?) models don't last. The O-rings in the air chamber fail after a year or two of use. And usually the rubber seals on the valve stem attachment start leaking within the first year.

So last year, I had it with the cheapies. I decided to splurge on my next floor pump. I bought a Park Tool PFP-4. Everything was great, until...

Even Fine Tools Can Fail

This year, the key component to the pump failed. The pressure gauge no longer returned to zero when not in use. It sat at about 40lbs. It meant I had to subtract 40lbs from any pressure I tried to pump my tires to. I wanted 120lbs? I had to pump to 160lbs on the gauge. The pump became virtually useless, or at least inconvenient for a gear geek like me.

That's when I discovered 2 key features to my Park Tool PFP-4 pump.

First, I found that the pump can be easily broken down into a number of replaceable components. Go look at the exploded view on their website: Park Tool PFP-4. They even have detailed instructions for replacing the key components, including the pressure gauge.

Okay, so now the engineer in me was getting excited. Replaceable components. Detailed instructions. But how easy would it be to get the components, and in my case the gauge? Like any decent company, I found Park Tool extends a limited lifetime warranty on their products. But were they all talk and no action? This led me to the second key feature about the Park Tool Co. and the main reason why you should be putting Park Tools in your bicycling toolbox: they indeed stand completely behind their products.

Let me explain what happened next.

Simple, Efficient Customer Service

I fired off a brief e-mail to the company. I explained the problem, and asked how I could get a replacement gauge. Within hours, I received a short, but pleasant reply: "Sorry about the problem, we will send a new gauge." In just over a week, the replacement gauge arrived in my mailbox. No charge to me.

It was a simple solution to the problem. It cost Park Tool Co. $2.50 in postage, and maybe $2.00 for the gauge itself. A small investment from their company bought them a lifetime customer in me, and this invaluable, unsolicited, word-of-mouth promotion.

Start Putting Park Tools In Your Bicycling Toolbox

If they don't indeed last a lifetime, know that Park will stand behind their products and you should be able to get any replacement component you might need. Begin filling your toolbox right now, with:
Fantastic Prices on Park Tools @ probikekit.com

At probikekit.com you'll find a convenient section dedicated to Park Tools.


Do you have a Park Tool story to share? Post it in the comments.

Photo by: Kevin Rokosh

Free Speed in Your Next Time Trial

When it's just you against the clock, to go fast you certainly need a high sustained power output. But couple that with superior aerodynamics and you'll really rocket down the course.

Once you hit about 40kph as your sustained speed, the majority of any additional power output from your engine (i.e. your heart and legs) is thrown into an exponentially increasing battle against wind resistance. Ever smaller bits actually go towards more speed and ever larger chunks fight wind resistance. If you don't get your aerodynamics on the bike dialed in precisely, you'll be fighting a losing battle from the end of your 5 second countdown to the moment you cross the finish line.

The Keys To Improved Aerodynamics

So how do you fine tune your aerodynamics? Here are some key points to consider in your setup:

• Wear a skinsuit and booties over your shoes - no flappy, loose fitting clothes. Long sleeved skinsuits have been shown to be a little more aero than bare arms
  
• Use an aero helmet - there are numerous models on the market now that are all ANSI-approved for racing. Even for a triathlete, an aero helmet alone can do wonders for your bike split time. You should be able to find one these days with decent ventilation, which should be a consideration for anything longer than an Olympic distance triathlon.
  
• Use aero handlebars - clip-on at least, if not a full-on set of aero bars.
  
• Adjust the aero bar width to keep your forearms close together - typically the closer the better.
• Keep your chin down - drop your chin to fill the space between your shoulders and above your forearms.
  
• Keep your knees in - pedal with your knees almost touching the top tube on each stroke.
  
• Upgrade your wheels to deep dish rims and a disc rear wheel if possible - an expensive option, but worth it if you can afford it. You would only use a front disc (as in the picture above) on an indoor track.
  
• Put it all together on a complete time trial specific frame - another expensive option, but worth it again as you can really dial in your positioning, and leave it all set instead of fiddling with modifying your road bike setup for time trials

Leipheimer is getting his chin just right in this picture. His forearms are great, but he'd need to be careful about how parallel they are to the ground. These days, the UCI rules want your forearms to be pretty much parallel to the ground, foregoing the "praying mantis" position that emerged a couple of years back.

Now ideally you would fiddle with modifying everything in the above list by running trials in a wind tunnel. But we don't all have easy access to a wind tunnel. If you do have access, an hour of time in there can cost close to $1000.

So what can a frugal bicyclist do instead? Here's where you can find some free speed in your next time trial.

Roll Down Tests

Your free wind tunnel will be a hill that you can roll down from a standing start to record your maximal terminal velocity near the bottom. Think soap box derby, and you get the idea.

Find a relatively isolated hill with very little wind exposure and traffic. If a car runs up or down the hill during a trial, you'll have to scrap that run. You might need to plan your test runs early in the morning, as winds tend to be calm then and traffic is usually quite light. The hill should let you roll from a dead stop at the top to a terminal velocity of 40 to 45 kph or more at the bottom. If you've got someone to help you, all the better as he can hold you at the top. If you're making slight changes to body positioning, your helper can also ensure you stay consistent from one run to the next.

You'll need some type of cyclocomputer that allows you to record laps and the maximum speed in each lap. If you can download the data, that's even better. Personally, I use a Polar HRM with cadence, speed and power. It allows me to record everything for later download and analysis on my computer.

Select one element of your setup to test. For one test sequence, I varied the height of my handlebars . On another day, I tested two different time trial helmets. It's important to keep it simple - only one variable should be changed.

At a very minimum, run 5 roll-down tests for each variable setting - more if you've got the time and the legs for repeated hill climbs to the top. For my handlebars, I ran 5 tests as it's a bit fiddly to move them up and down. For my helmet test, I ran 7 tests on each helmet, as it was really easy to simply change helmets from one run to the next.

You want to begin each roll-down from the same spot at the top of your hill. When you reach the bottom, apply your brakes at the same landmark and then hit the lap button on your cyclocomputer - that way your lap will store the maximum speed attained for that roll-down.

If you're testing something simple to change like a helmet or a particular way you're holding your body (such as how low you're dropping your chin), alternate between the 2 settings for all of your roll-down tests. Your results will be interleaved, such that all even laps will be for one setting, and odd laps for the other. This will really help to factor out any slight changes in wind from one run to the next. If the setup is a little more complicated to change, like undoing bolts to move bars up or down, then do the full set of roll-downs with one setting before changing to another.

If a car passes you either up or down during a trial, DO NOT hit the lap button and simply abandon that run as quickly as possible by hitting the brakes and returning to the top of the hill.

Analysis

When you've gathered all your data, look at the maximum speed attained during each trial. I throw the numbers into a simple spreadsheet, and typically average all the runs at one setting. I'll also look at the average after I've thrown out the highest and lowest speeds for a particular setting, something statisticians call discarding the outliers.

What you're looking for is a clear winner - the highest average maximum speed attained for one test setting. I did see this with my test of handlebar setup, as I found a slightly higher position was faster than an extremely low position. With my helmets, the two of them tested so close that I determined they were identical.

This method of testing is not perfect, and of course not as precise as a wind tunnel. But in my opinion, it's better than guessing. You won't always find a runaway winner in your setup, but oftentimes you'll at least see a trend you can work with, which brings me to my last point.

Practice Makes Perfect

Once you've got a position worked out, you must train in that position. The most aero setup might not allow you maximum power output. But with practice, you'll get better. I ride at least one of my workouts each week on my time trial bike - another advantage of having a separate bike for this. If you need to modify a road bike setup all the time, you're likely to get lazy and forget about it until race day.

Photo "Jamie Staff - Kilo Time Trial" by: johnthescone